Sunday 25 October 2015

Xtal Filters

Spent the last couple of days off and on in the shack matching crystals and sweeping crystal filters. Results from crystal matching yields a wealth of data most of which I'm not sure yet what to do with.  Frequency is the easy one and then things can get a little complicated.  Data I have access to is as follows:

 Xtl                  Fs               -3dB BW  Rs          Cm          Lm          Q
x4        4,913,470 95 9 0.0184 56.96   195,438
x9        4,913,508 100 11.14 0.0182 57.51   159,442
x14        4,913,536 100 11.14 0.0182 57.51   159,443
x15        4,913,536 96 9.11 0.0186 56.56   191,570
x5        4,913,545 96 9.11 0.0186 56.56   191,570
x8        4,913,547 97 11.14 0.0177 59.29   164,374
x1        4,913,587 92 9 0.0178 58.81   201,816
x10        4,913,600 85 8.76 0.0166 63.22   222,727













I took out 7 other crystals as the Q for them was below 150,000.  I read that number somewhere as the defining line, but I suppose open for debate.





So far anything I've read on the subject, I'm not clear as to how to use all this data in making choices for crystal selection.  Testing so far I've used a breadboard, not the best I know, and a board I etched to help with testing crystal filters.  Results while interesting so far, are very time consuming in obtaining.  I can see the effects of changing capacitors and a much more detailed and a better test jig is in order before being able to have something useful to go with.  















One surprise was the minimal effect on the ripple when substituting a good crystal with one that has a poor numbers or a Fs much further away. What I can say for sure is that I can see that the crystal filter as a complete circuit may be the way to go when testing such circuits.  The capacitors and matching transformers have a large effect on the filters response and when ever I get around to doing this testing again, I will incorporate the torroids as well. Not just the caps and crystals.












Now back to building the LBS project and hopefully not get too distracted again.







73, Peter





No comments:

Post a Comment